OnlyFans performer Lily Phillips exploded online after posting her pornographic video of sleeping with 101 men in one day and starring in a subsequent YouTube documentary about the stunt in 2024. Now, Phillips is a tabloid sensation, making headlines about faking a pregnancy and getting a boyfriend like any other influencer would. Between late Nov. and Dec. 2024, her name was Googled 6.4 million times, according to Google Trends.

Being an adult creator mixes something she really enjoys — sex — with creativity, Phillips told Mashable in an interview. "It was something I just really wanted to do," she said. "I knew it was something that was just for me." 

And she makes money from it. A lot of it. 

While Phillips was tight-lipped about a typical month's earnings, she did share that her biggest month pulled her in $800,000 following the shoot with 101 men.

"What's not to love?" she asked.

Phillips's profile has risen at the same time as a moral panic against porn, both stateside and in the UK, where she resides. 

For years, adult content creators like Phillips have been pushed off mainstream social media platforms. More recently, with the enactment of age-verification laws in many states and in the UK, access to explicit content has become more restricted; if a porn site complies, visitors must submit proof of age, be it a government ID or a facial scan. This has also occurred with content that's not at all explicit but deemed potentially harmful to minors, like a Reddit forum to help people stop smoking. 

For Phillips, who mainly uploads content on her OnlyFans account, porn allows her to be creative and make the content she wants (within the OnlyFans guidelines, of course). 

"For me, I see it as a real art," she said. "And it sounds silly, but I really…get to create my own art every day."

"I wasn't very good at school. I'm not great academically or anything like that. So to find something that I excel in feels amazing," she continued.

What people get wrong about Lily Phillips

There are many misconceptions about sex workers out there. The ones Phillips has heard about herself include that she's money-hungry ("No, I just do something that I enjoy and love") and that she has an "evil demeanor" ("No, none of this is evil or necessarily wrong…I'm just putting my art out there for people to also enjoy").

She also sees how she's treated differently from men in the adult industry. One of the most-asked questions she received is what her parents think. "And if the male porn star [were sitting] here," she said, "is that the first question you would ask him?"

There's an idea of "ownership" when it comes to women, Phillips said, like her parents somehow own her. "No, this was just a choice I made on my own when I was an adult," she said. 

She herself is open-minded about other people's perspectives, so she finds it sad that others aren't the same way. "When someone's made their mind up, and they think they know everything about you and your job, it can be quite frustrating."

She'd love to sit down with someone who is anti-porn and hear why they're against it, and destigmatize the industry for them.

Phillips is also a supporter of the Online Safety Act, the UK's age-verification law that went into effect in July 2025. 

"There's nothing worse than…someone underage seeing my porn," she said. She first saw porn at 11 years old, and thinks the thought of someone underage seeing it is gross. 

Early studies about age-verification laws, however, suggest that they don't work to keep minors off porn sites due to software like VPNs and non-compliant websites. Many instead urge for device-level filters, which free speech advocates say don't infringe on adults' rights. Last week, Pornhub announced it's live in the UK again following the implementation of such a filter on iOS 26.4 devices; it previously blocked itself due to the Online Safety Act.

Phillips is also a proponent of more sex education and media literacy in schools. She mentioned that young men could watch porn and think that sex is like this in real life. As an adult, you come to learn that porn isn't like how everyone has sex, but that's not the case when you first become sexually active, she said. (Though some adults likely don't know this, either.)

Phillips told Mashable she hasn't seen her income impacted by the Online Safety Act at all. That could be because OnlyFans requires a credit card to create an account, which is a form of age verification. But a preliminary study shows that other adult creators have experienced income losses due to these restrictions.

A typical day for Lily Phillips

Every day is "super different," Phillips said, but she gave an example of what she was up to the day of her Mashable interview. That morning, she walked her dog and filmed custom content for clients and social media content. 

After the interview, she said she had other calls scheduled, including video calls with clients. Then, she was going to wind down for the evening.

"Most people think it's a huge amount of sex, but I probably only really have sex with other creators once a week," she revealed. "People probably think I'm banging out every single day, but [I'm] really not."

As for porn studios, Phillips said she only works with them around once a month. She prefers her content to be exclusive to her OnlyFans, as she owns it herself. When she makes a video with a studio, "You sign that contract and they can sell [the video] when you're dead." Plus, studios don't pay as well. An industry professional told Mashable that the typical heterosexual scene pays around $1,200-1,600 for women and $700-1,000 for men. This can increase for specialized scenes or higher-profile performers.

Especially with OnlyFans, marketing and advertising are a huge part of getting an audience. OnlyFans itself doesn't have discovery functions, so creators need to go elsewhere, like social media, to find customers. So a lot of her time is spent creating social media content.

And it just so happened that days before Phillips spoke to Mashable, her Instagram account disappeared.

What happened to Lily Phillips's Instagram?

Phillips and her team confirmed to Mashable that her Instagram account was removed in early May. A Meta spokesperson told Mashable on May 11 that the account was removed in error and has been restored.

"A huge amount of industry girls are being deleted at the minute," Phillips told Mashable while the account was still down. This isn't too surprising, as more and more sex-related, LGBTQ, and reproductive health accounts are reporting that Meta is censoring them.

"We're really being discriminated against," Phillips said. "All my content is always in the guidelines. I really don't even show my ass cheeks or anything like that. I'm pretty strict."

Instagram is one of her biggest platforms that brings in OnlyFans subscribers, so if it remained down, it would've impacted her financially, she said. Her vlogging Instagram account with over 110,000 followers remained active while the main account, @lilyphillip_s, was down, but that's a small fraction of the 1.6 million following on her other account.

What's next for Lily Phillips?

In the immediate future, Phillips is appearing on the new Australian reality series Turned On: Dirty Sexy Money, which premieres at the end of May. 

Phillips sees herself as a workaholic, saying she sometimes doesn't sit back and take in how much she's made or the recognition she's received. But as the nature of content creators, adult and not, you can't just sit back on your laurels once you have an $800,000 month. If you want that to happen again, you have to work for it.

"Sustaining that can be quite hard," she said. Once you have a viral moment like Phillips did with 100 Men, she thinks about how she can top herself (figuratively) and keep doing better.